All blessed promise! Shall it be fulfilled,
Tho’ the eye glazes and the sense is still’d?
Shall that fair Shape which beckon’d with bright hand
Out of the Mirage of a Heavenly Land,
Fade to a cloud that moves with blighting breath
Over the ever-troublous sea of Death?
Ah no; for on the crown of Zion’s Hill,
Cloth’d on with peace, the fair Shape beckons still!
The New Crusade.
It was a curious sensation for Ambrose Bradley, after bitter experience
of a somewhat ignominious persecution, to find himself all at once--by
a mere shuffle of the cards, as it were--one of the most popular persons
in all Bohemia; I say Bohemia advisedly, for of course that greater
world of fashion and religion, which Bohemia merely fringes, regarded
the New Church and its pastor with supreme indifference.
But the worship of Bohemia is something; nay, Bradley found it much.
He could count among the occasional visitors to his temple some of the
leading names in Art and Science. Fair votaries came to him by legions,
led by the impassioned and enthusiastic Alma Craik. The society
journals made much of him; one of them, in a series of articles called
‘Celebrities in their Slippers,’ gave a glowing picture of the new
Apostle in his study, in which the sweetest of Raphael’s Madonnas looked
down wonderingly on Milo’s Venus, and where Newman’s ‘Parochial Sermons’
stood side by side with Tyndall’s Belfast address, and the original
edition of the ‘Vestiges of Creation.’ The correspondent of the ‘New
York Herald’ telegraphed, on more than one occasion, the whole, or
nearly the whole, of one of his Sunday discourses--which, printed in
large type, occupied two columns of the great Transatlantic daily; and
he received forthwith, from an enterprising Yankee caterer, an offer of
any number of dollars per lecture, if he would enter into a contract to
‘stump’ the States.
Surely this was fame, of a sort.
Although, if the truth must be told, even Bohemia did not take the New
Church overseriously, Bradley found his intellectual forces expand with
the growing sense of power.
Standing in no fear of any authority, human or superhuman, he gradually
advanced more and more into the arena of spiritual controversy; retired
further and further from the old landmarks of dogmatic religion; drew
nearer and still nearer to the position of an accredited teacher
of religious æstheticism. Always literary and artistic, rather than
puritanical, in his sympathies, he found himself before long at that
standpoint which regards the Bible merely as a poetical masterpiece, and
accepts Christianity as simply one manifestation, though a central one,
of the great scheme of human morals.
Thus the cloud of splendid supernaturalism, on which alone has been
projected from time immemorial the mirage of a heavenly promise,
gradually dissolved away before his sight,
And like the cloudy fabric of a vision
Left not a wrack behind.
The creed of spiritual sorrow was exchanged for the creed of spiritual
pleasure. The man, forgetful of all harsh experience, became rapt in the
contemplation of ‘beautiful ideas’--of an intellectual phantasmagoria
in which Christ and Buddha, St. John and Shakespeare, Mary Magdalene and
Mary Shelley, the angels of the church and the winged pterodactyls of
the chalk, flashed and faded in everchanging kaleidoscopic dream.
The mood which welcomed all forms of belief, embraced none utterly, but
contemplated all, became vague, chaotic, and transcendental; and Ambrose
Bradley found himself in a fairy world where nothing seemed real and
solemn enough as a law for life.
For a time, of course, he failed to realise his own position.
He still rejoiced in the belief that he was building the foundation of
his New Church, which was essentially the Old Church, on the rock of
common sense. He was still certain that the Christ of history, the
accredited Saviour of mankind, was blessing and consecrating his eager
endeavour. He still persuaded himself that his creed was a creed of
regeneration, his mission apostolic.
He had taken a small house on the borders of Regent’s Park, and not
far away from the church which Alma had built for him as a voluntary
offering. It was arranged plainly but comfortably, with a touch of the
then predominant æstheticism; the decorations tasteful, the furniture
mediaeval; but all this was Alma’s doing and, throughout, her choosing.
Bradley himself remained unchanged; a strong unpretending man of simple
habits, more like an athletic curate in his dress and bearing than like
a fashionable preacher.
Of course it goes without saying that he was ostracised by the preachers
of his own maternal Church, the Church of England; so that he added the
consciousness of sweet and painless martyrdom to that of popular success
Attacks upon him appeared from time to time in the less important
religious journals; but the great organs of the national creed treated
him and his performances with silent contempt.
He was seated in his study one morning in early summer, reading one of
the attacks to which I have just alluded, when Miss Craik was shown in.
He sprang up to welcome her, with outstretched hands.
‘I want you to come with me at once,’ she said. ‘Agatha Combe is worse,
and I should like you to see her.’
‘Of course I will come,’ answered Bradley.
‘But I thought she was almost recovered?’
‘She has had a relapse; not a serious one, I trust, but I am a little
alarmed about her. She talks so curiously.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Yes; about dying. She says she has a presentiment that she won’t live.
Poor Agatha! When _she_ talks like that, it is strange indeed.’
Leaving the house together, Bradley and Alma entered Regent’s Park.
Their way lay right across, towards the shady sides of Primrose Hill,
where Miss Combe was then residing. The day was fair and sunny, and
there was an unusual number of pleasure-seekers and pedestrians in the
park. A number of boys were playing cricket on the spaces allotted for
that recreation, nursemaids and children were sprinkled everywhere, and
near the gate of the Zoological Gardens, which they passed, a brass band
was merrily performing. Bradley’s heart was light, and he looked round
on the bright scene with a kindling eye, in the full pride of his
physical strength and intellectual vigour.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘those teachers are wise who proclaim that health
is happiness. What a joyful world it would be if everyone were well and
strong.’
‘Ah yes!’ said his companion. ‘But when sickness comes----’
She sighed heavily, for she was thinking of her friend Agatha Combe.
‘I sometimes think that the sum of human misery is trifling compared
to that of human happiness,’ pursued the clergyman. ‘Unless one is a
downright pessimist, a very Schopenhauer, surely one must see that the
preponderance is in favour of enjoyment. Look at these ragged boys--how
merry they are! There is not so much wretchedness in the world, perhaps,
as some of us imagine.’
She glanced at him curiously, uncertain whither his thoughts were
tending. He speedily made his meaning plain.
‘Religion and Sorrow have hitherto gone hand in hand, vanishing through
the gate of the grave. But why should not Religion and Joy be united
this side the last mystery? Why should not this world be the Paradise of
all our dreams?’
‘It can never be so, Ambrose,’ replied Alma, ‘until we can abolish
Death.’
‘And we can do that in a measure; that is to say, we can abolish
premature decay, sick ness, disease. Look what Science has done in fifty
years! More than other-worldliness has done in a thousand! When Death
comes gently, at the natural end of life, it generally comes as a
blessing--as the last sacrament of peace. I think if I could live man’s
allotted term, useful, happy, loving and beloved, I could be content to
sleep and never wake again.’
Alma did not answer. Her thoughts were wandering, or she would have
shrunk to find her idolised teacher turning so ominously towards
materialism. But indeed it was not the first time that Bradley’s
thoughts had drifted in that direction. It is not in moments of personal
happiness or success that we lean with any eagerness towards the
supernatural. Glimpses of a world to come are vouchsafed chiefly to
those who weep and those who fail; and in proportion as the radiance of
this life brightens, fades the faint aurora of the other.
In a small cottage, not far from Chalk Farm, they found Miss Combe.
She was staying, as her custom was, with friends, the friends on this
occasion being the editor of an evening paper and his wife; and she had
scarcely arrived on her visit--some weeks before--when she had begun to
ail. She was sitting up when Alma arrived, in an armchair drawn close
to the window of a little back parlour, commanding a distant view of
Hampstead Hill.
Wrapt in a loose dressing-gown, and leaning back in her chair, she was
just touched by the spring sunshine, the brightness of which even the
smoke from the great city could not subdue. She did not seem to be in
pain, but her face was pale and flaccid, her eyes were heavy and dull.
Her ailment was a weakness of the heart’s action, complicated with
internal malady of another kind.
Tears stood in Alma’s eyes as she embraced and kissed her old friend.
‘I have brought Mr. Bradley to see you,’ she cried. ‘I am glad to see
you looking so much better.’
Miss Combe smiled and held out her hand to Bradley, who took it gently.
‘When you came in,’ she said, ‘I was half dreaming. I thought I was a
little child again, playing with brother Tom in the old churchyard at
Taviton. Tom has only just gone out; he has been here all the morning.’
Said brother Tom, the unwashed apostle of the Hall of Science, had left
unmistakable traces of his presence, for a strong odour of bad tobacco
pervaded the room.
‘It seems like old times,’ proceeded the little lady, with a sad smile,
‘to be sick, and to be visited by a clergyman. I shall die in the odour
of sanctity after all.’
‘You must not talk of dying,’ cried Alma.
‘You will soon be all right again.’
‘I’m afraid not, dear,’ answered Miss Combe. ‘I saw my mother’s face
again last night, and it never stayed so long. I take it as a warning
that I shall soon be called away.’
Strange enough it seemed to both those who listened, to hear a person
of Miss Combe’s advanced views talking in the vocabulary of commonplace
superstition.
‘Don’t think I am repining,’ she continued. ‘If I were not ripe, do you
think I should be gathered? I am going where we all must go--who knows
whither? and, after all, I’ve had a “good time,” as the Yankees say. Do
you believe, Mr. Bradley,’ she added, turning her keen, grave eyes
on the clergyman, ‘that an atheist can be a spiritualist, and hold
relations with an unseen world?’
‘You are no atheist, Miss Combe,’ he answered. ‘God forbid!’
‘I don’t know,’ was the reply. ‘I am not one in the same degree as my
brother Tom of course; but I am afraid I have no living faith beyond the
region of ghosts and fairies. The idea of Deity is incomprehensible to
me, save as that of the “magnified non-natural Man” my teachers have
long ago discarded. I think I might still understand the anthropomorphic
God of my childhood, but having lost Him I can comprehend no other.’
‘The other is not far to seek,’ responded Bradley, bending towards her,
and speaking eagerly. ‘You will find him in Jesus Christ--the living,
breathing godhead, whose touch and inspiration we all can feel.’
‘I’m afraid _I_ can’t,’ said Miss Combe. ‘I can understand Jesus the
man, but Christ the God, who walked in the flesh and was crucified, is
beyond the horizon of my conception--even of my sympathy.’
‘Don’t say that,’ cried Alma. ‘I am sure you believe in our loving
Saviour.’
Miss Combe did not reply, but turned her face wearily to the spring
sunlight.
‘If there is no other life,’ she said, after a long pause, ‘the idea of
Jesus Christ is a mockery. Don’t you think so, Mr. Bradley?’
‘Not altogether,’ replied Bradley, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘If the
life we live here were all, if, after a season, we vanished like the
flowers, we should still need the comfort of Christ’s message--his
injunction to “love one another.” The central idea of Christianity is
peace and good fellowship; and if our life had raised itself to that
ideal of love, it would be an ideal life, and its brevity would be of
little consequence.’
Miss Combe smiled. Her keen intelligence went right into the speaker’s
mind, and saw the true meaning of that shallow optimism. Bradley noticed
the smile, and coloured slightly under the calm, penetrating gaze of the
little woman.
‘I have always been taught to believe,’ said Miss Combe, quietly,
‘that the true secret of the success of Christianity was its heavenly
promise--its pledge of a future life.’
‘Of course,’ cried Alma.
‘Certainly that promise was given,’ said Bradley, ‘and I have no doubt
that, in some way or another, it will be fulfilled.’
‘What do you mean by in some way or another?’ asked Miss Combe.
‘I mean that Christ’s Heaven may not be a heaven of physical
consciousness, but of painless and passive perfection; bringing to the
weary peace and forgetfulness, to the happy absolute absorption into the
eternal and unconscious life of God.’
‘Nirwâna, in short!’ said Miss Combe, dryly. ‘Well, for my own part, I
should not care so much for so sleepy a Paradise. I postulate a heaven
where I should meet and know my mother, and where the happy cry of
living creatures would rise like a fountain into the clear azure for
evermore.’
‘Surely,’ said Bradley, gently, ‘we all hope as much!’
‘But do we _believe_ it?’ returned Miss Combe. ‘That is the question.
All human experience, all physiology, all true psychology, is against
it. The letter of the eternal Universe, written on the open Book of
Astronomy, speaks of eternal death and change. Shall we survive while
systems perish, while suns go out like sparks, and the void is sown with
the wrecks of worn-out worlds?’
In this strain the conversation continued for some little time longer.
Seeing the invalid’s tender yearning, Bradley spoke yet more hopefully
of the great Christian promise, describing the soul as imperishable, and
the moral order of the universe as stationary and secure; but what he
said was half-hearted, and carried with it no conviction. He felt for
the first time the helplessness of a transcendental Christianity, like
his own. Presently he returned, almost unconsciously, to the point from
which he had set forth.
‘There is something, perhaps,’ he said, ‘in the Positivist conception of
mankind as one ever-changing and practically deathless Being. Though
men perish, Man survives. Children spring like flowers in the dark
footprints of Death, and in them the dead inherit the world.’
‘That creed would possibly suit me,’ retimed Miss Combe, smiling sadly
again, ‘if I were a mother, if I were to live again in my own offspring.
I’m afraid it is a creed with little comfort for childless men, or for
old maids like myself! No; my selfishness requires something much more
tangible. If I am frankly told that I must die, that consciousness
ceases for ever with the physical breath of life, I can understand it,
and accept my doom; it is disagreeable, since I am rather fond of life
and activity, but I can accept it. It is no consolation whatever to
reflect that I am to exist vicariously, without consciousness of the
fact, in other old maids to come! The condition of moral existence
is--consciousness; without _that_, I shall be practically abolished.
Such a creed, as the other you have named, is simple materialism,
disguise it as you will.’
‘I am not preaching Positivism,’ cried Bradley; ‘God forbid! I only said
there was something in its central idea. Christ’s promise is that we
shall live again! Can we not accept that promise, without asking “how?”’
‘No, we can’t; that is to say, _I_ can’t. It is the “how” which forms
the puzzle. Besides, the Bible expressly speaks of the resurrection of
the body.’
‘A poetical expression,’ suggested Bradley.
‘Yes; but something more,’ persisted the little woman. ‘I can’t conceive
an existence without those physical attributes with which I was born.
When I think of my dead mother, it is of the very face and form I used
to know; the same eyes, the same sweet lips, the same smile, the same
touch of loving hands. Either we shall exist again _as we are_, or----’
‘Of course we shall so exist,’ broke in Alma, more and more nervous
at the turn the conversation was taking. ‘Is it not all beautifully
expressed in St. Paul? We sow a physical body, we shall reap a spiritual
body; but they will be one and the same. But pray do not talk of it any
more. You are not dying, dear, thank God!’
Half an hour later Bradley and Alma left the house together.
‘I am sorry dear Agatha has not more faith,’ said Alma, thoughtfully, as
they wandered back towards the park.
‘I think she has a great deal,’ said Bradley, quickly. ‘But I was
shocked to see her looking so ill and worn. Is she having good medical
advice?’
‘The best in London. Dr. Harley sees her nearly every day. Poor Agatha!
She has not had too much happiness in this world. She has worked so
hard, and all alone!’
They entered the park gate, and came again among the greenness and the
sunshine. Everything seemed light and happiness, and the air had that
indescribable sense of resurrection in it which comes with the early
shining of the primrose and the reawakening of the year. Bradley glanced
at his companion. Never had she seemed so bright and beautiful!
With the flush of the rose on her cheek, and her eyes full of pensive
light, she moved lightly and gracefully at his side.
A lark rose from the grass not far away, and warbled ecstatically
overhead. Bradley felt his blood stir and move like sap in the bough at
the magic touch of the season, and with kindling eyes he drew nearer to
his companion’s side.
‘Well, dearest, you were a true prophet,’ he said, taking her hand and
drawing it softly within his arm. ‘It has all come to pass, through
_you_. The New Church flourishes in spite of those who hate all things
new; and I have you--you only--to thank for it all.’
‘I want no thanks,’ replied Alma. ‘It is reward enough to forward the
good work, and to make you happy.’
‘Happy? Yes, I ought to be happy, should I not?’
‘And you are, I hope, dear Ambrose!’
‘Yes, I think so. Only sometimes--on a day like this, for example--I
cannot help looking back with a sigh to the dear old times at Fensea. A
benediction seems to rest upon the quiet country life, which contented
me _then_ so little. I miss the peaceful fields, the loneliness and rest
of the fens, the silence of the encircling sea!’
‘And Goody Tilbury’s red cloak!’ cried Alma, smiling. ‘And the scowl of
Summerhayes the grocer, and the good. Bishop’s blessing!’
‘Ah, but after all the life was a gentle one till I destroyed it. The
poor souls loved me, till I became too much for them. And then, Alma,
the days with _you_! Your first coming, like a ministering angel, to
make this sordid earth seem like a heavenly dream! To-day, dearest, it
almost seems as if my heaven was behind, and not before, me! I should
like to live those blissful moments over again--every one!’
Alma laughed outright, for she had a vivid remembrance of her friend’s
infinite vexations as a country clergyman.
‘That’s right,’ he said, smiling fondly; ‘laugh at me, if you please,
but I am quite serious in what I say. Here, in the great world of
London, though we see so much of one another, we do not seem quite so
closely united as we did yonder.’
‘Not so united!’ she cried, all her sweet face clouded in a moment.
‘Well, united as before, but differently. In the constant storm and
stress of my occupation, there is not the same pastoral consecration.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
In those days, dearest,’ he added, sinking his voice to a whisper, ‘we
used to speak oftener of love, we used to dream--did we not?--of being
man and wife.’
She drooped her gentle eyes, which had been fixed upon him earnestly,
and coloured softly; then, with a pretty touch of coquetry, laughed
again.
‘I am not jealous,’ she said, ‘and since you have another bride---’
‘Another bride!’ he repeated, with a startled look of surprise.
‘I mean your Church,’ she said gaily.
‘Ah yes,’ he said, relieved. ‘But do you know I find this same bride of
mine a somewhat dull companion, and a poor exchange, at any rate, for a
bride of flesh and blood. Dearest, I have been thinking it all over! Why
should we not realise our old dream, and live in love together?’
Alma stood silent. They were in a lonely part of the park, in a footway
winding through its very centre. Close at hand was one of the wooden
benches. With beating heart and heightened colour, she strolled to the
seat and sat down.
Bradley followed, placed himself by her side, and gently took her hand.
‘Well?’ he said.
She turned her head and looked quietly into his eyes. Her grave fond
look brought the bright blood to his own cheeks, and just glancing round
to see that they were unobserved, he caught her in his arms and kissed
her passionately--on lips that kissed again.
‘Shall it be as I wish?’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes, Ambrose,’ she answered. ‘What you wish, I wish too; now as always,
your will is my law.’
‘And when?’
‘When you please,’ she answered. ‘Only before I marry you, you must
promise me one thing.’
‘Yes! yes!’
‘To regard me _still_ as only your handmaid; to look upon your Church
always as your true Bride, to whom you are most deeply bound.’
‘I’ll try, dear; but will you be very angry if I sometimes forget her,
when I feel your loving arms around me?’
‘Very angry,’ she said, smiling radiantly, upon him.
They rose up, and walked on together hand in hand.